When I think about what fiction does morally, I'm happier thinking of a person full of multiplicities - sort of fragmented.

I tend to foster drama via bleakness. If I want the reader to feel sympathy for a character, I cleave the character in half, on his birthday. And then it starts raining. And he's made of sugar.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness. Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded . . . sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.

Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.

According to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving. Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now.

It's a big world, and I really like it.

Character is that sum total of moments we can't explain.

The generalizing writer is like the passionate drunk, stumbling into your house mumbling: I know I'm not being clear, exactly, but don't you kind of feel what I'm feeling?

Kindness, it turns out, is hard - it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include . . . well, EVERYTHING.

I heard you went to Ireland...I haven't seen it in many years. Is it still green then, and beautiful?Wet as a bath sponge and mud to the knees but, aye, it was green enough.

God is spirit. The spirit dwells in a body. We are the Holy temple.

If you lose God's paradise in Heaven, then you never existed.

Meditation is culture.

So we all embark wondering what lies over the horizon, what’s around the next bend. And isn’t that, in the end, what drives us?

The song was there before me, before I came along. I just sorta came down and just sorta took it down with a pencil, but it was there before I came around.

We can have confidence in the long-term foundation of our economy ... I think the system basically is sound. I truly do.

My goal is to never lose. That may not be realistic, but I'm going to try.

We run things, things don't run we.

Keeping perspective and being happy and being energetic and being creative - that's all tied to being healthy.